Record Attempt by Sumba Weavers: East Nusa Tenggara

By Barrie | October 11th, 2007 | No Comments

There was intense activity in the house of Hendrik Pali, 60, in Lambanapu, seven kilometers east of Waingapu, East Nusa Tenggara (NTT), with large tents being put up in the front yard in July. While some people thought the father of six was getting ready for a party, Hendrik turned out to be preparing for a rare cultural event — the making of a 50-meter-long piece of handwoven cloth for making garments called hinggi .

East Sumba Regent Umbu Mehang Kunda kicked off the event on Aug. 23. The same day also saw the start of a similar event in Paung subdistrict, Melo, which is 60 km south of Waingapu.

The Lambanapu weavers are aiming to complete the length of cloth by the third week of December.

“This is a first for our community and it’s a major event for East Sumba people and for the nation in general, which demands hard work and great responsibility,” Hendrik said at his home.

Though it is an East Sumba regency administration project, Hendrik’s home is the place where the cloth will be made and stored.

The choice of location, according to Sylvi A. Anggraini, the chairwoman of the National Handicraft Council for East Sumba, is due to the fact that Hendrik and his Ori Angu Studio are creative, dynamic, productive and experienced.

“I noticed Pak Hendrik was very creative in weaving motifs. The weavers there are skilled at giving old designs a contemporary twist,” she said.

Sylvi said the project was aimed at rebuilding people’s pride in Sumba and its textiles.

In the eyes of this Javanese woman, East Sumba’s woven material is beautiful but hard to sell.

“Due to poor promotion, so few people can identify Sumba cloth,” she said.

With this in mind, Jaya Suprana from the Indonesian Museum of Records (MURI) challenged Sylvi and her team to produce a 100-meter-long stretch of East Sumba traditional cloth during an exhibition of the region’s woven products at Jakarta’s Bentara Budaya in April. Sylvi could not resist.

“My peers agreed and enthusiastically joined hands to begin the project,” she said.

Sylvi hopes that through this effort, Sumba will also be better known abroad.

“This event will contribute to the economy of East Sumba and hopefully make it more famous, as many people mistake the culturally rich Sumba for Sumbawa,” said Sylvi, who is married to Regent Mehang Kunda.

It takes a relatively long time to make a piece of Sumba fabric even at the usual size of 140 by 250 centimeters. Ten people may need six months to produce four top-quality pieces, which can be sold for Rp 300,000 to Rp 3 million a piece. Each weaver gets Rp 120,000 to Rp 1.2 million from making the four lengths of material.

But the work is done on a part-time basis, lasting one to two hours daily.

It is therefore beneficial to boost the promotion of Sumba woven material so that with increasing public demand, the income of craftspeople will be increased. While the conventional size is already difficult to make, it is even more so in the case of weaving a record-breaking length.

This mammoth task involves 60 people, 16 rolls of yarn, 15 liters of blue dye, 15 kilograms of candlenuts, lobha tree bark and leaves, mengkudu shrub roots and other ingredients.

Other than the yarn and dye, all the raw components have to be found in remote areas and are now getting scarcer.

The cost of making the 50-meter length of cloth has been estimated at Rp 35 million.

“It will make me happy to get a lot of people and other nations more acquainted with Sumba,” said project manager Hendrik when asked what he personally hoped to gain from the project.

Emanuel Dapa Loka